It used to run Ubuntu 10.10. I recently reformatted it to Fedora 14 and now the WiFi card does not work.

Here's the weird thing: The WiFi card has a light on the laptop's front panel that says if it's "enabled" (can be seen by the O/S, in Ubuntu I would have no wlan0 interface until I enabled it this way, and it wouldn't show on lspci as far as I remember).

The WiFi is enabled using the Fn+F11 combo. I know the F11 key works, as I can use the full screen in Firefox with it, and I know the Fn keys, as I can use the Fn+F5/F6 combo to alter the volume, etc. No matter what I try, I can't seem to be able to get that light on, or the card to appear in Fedora.

This may be unrelated to Fedora; maybe the card has broken, but it seems odd that that would happen right when I installed Fedora.

Annoyingly, I don't know what make / model of WiFi card it was so I don't know if it's related to kernel modules or something similar (and nothing showing for it in lspci). Just that it worked (including actually using it to go on the internet) in Ubuntu 10.10, and does not now in Fedora 14.

Had some progress. Found a ubuntu 10.10 cd in the bin (literally), and booting live from that the light works again. Its a realtek 8187B, and shows up on lsusb, not lspci. Now to get that working on fedora !
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SirexJan 19 '11 at 19:25

1 Answer
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I am posting an answer, as I've got this working now. I had to recompile the kernel to get the rtl8187 module into it. I don't know why Fedora doesn't enable this module by default, or if there's a better way to do this without the recompile. If anyone knows a better way please share it!